Handwritten letter from Oswaldo Cruz (1914)

In 1914, doctor Oswaldo Cruz, a refugee in war-torn London, congratulates his mother on her birthday.

• Handwritten letter from Oswaldo Cruz to his mother.
• 4 pages.
• In Portuguese.
• 12.7 cm x 20 cm.
• London, October 22, 1914.
• Excellent condition.
• Unique piece.

My precious Mother,

This letter should reach you around your birthday. She is the bearer of the most heartfelt and sincere wishes for your happiness and the preservation of your precious health, our greatest treasure that we all guard with the greatest devotion. That day we were all at his side in spirit.

You are already wisely informed about what our life has been like here, through the letters my Doctor writes, I can inform you with greater [detail] and more art than I can about what happens here on a daily basis (...).

Our return will depend on the development of things related to the war. The seas are not completely free and that is why I believe that, for now, England is leading us to remain more separated, unless there is a radical change in the fortunes of the other allies. In this case we will have to separate The path minus signing that it will be the way back there.

London, despite the separation that opened it up, is a sad city. only leaves began to fall. The big one appears enveloped in dense gray fog. At night there is no lighting – precaution against the Neffilims who were expected but who did not come and I think will never come (...).

Osvaldo

Called the “Doctor of Brazil”, Oswaldo Cruz (1872 - 1917) graduated as a doctor at the age of twenty, already showing an interest in microbiology, which gained importance thanks to studies carried out by the Frenchman Louis Pasteur.

At the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, Brazil experienced the end of the monarchy and slavery. Crowds who then lived in the countryside went to cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Without basic sanitation and precarious infrastructure conditions, serious diseases (yellow fever, bubonic plague and smallpox) emerged. The President at the time asked for the help of Oswaldo Cruz, who wrote a health code, including mandatory vaccination and educational leaflets for the population and health professionals.

Despite the Vaccine Revolt, which occurred in 1904, Oswaldo Cruz achieved national and international recognition for the creation of an institute - very active to this day - for research and teaching, in addition to the production of vaccines and basic medicines for the needy population.

We have little information about Oswaldo Cruz's personal life. According to Brasiliana Itaú (page 542), "Oswaldo Cruz's letters are quite rare, which is perhaps due to his relatively brief life. Most of the letters that have become available to collectors are part of family correspondence with his brother-in-law, the painter João Batista da Costa, which was dispersed a few years ago."

Nara Azevedo and Ana Luce Girão Soares de Lima, researchers at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute, really reinforce that the letter confirms some biographical elements that are little documented about Oswaldo Cruz.

The mother | There are very few letters from Oswaldo Cruz to his mother in his archive. According to Oswaldo Cruz's biographers, she was quite cultured by the standards of the time, fluent in English and French. His parents were teachers in the city of Petrópolis, which is close to Rio de Janeiro. Amália Bulhões Cruz taught her six children to read and write. From the records we have in the letters to his wife, we see that Oswaldo Cruz attended theater, opera, and various shows. He had a great demand for books, as we see in his correspondence with Paul Albanel, of the firm Albanel et fils. which also sent equipment and scientific material. Could we speculate that your cultural taste was influenced by your mother? The fact is that references to her in biographies are few and in her personal archive as well.

The disease | Reading the letter, the reference to the doctor (it's the woman) seems like a clue that the illness was already taking the family's attention. As I already mentioned, the disease intensified a few months later.

The trip in Europe | Oswaldo Cruz had been in France with his entire family since the beginning of July 1914. The purpose of the trip was to visit European research centers and take a relative for treatment in Switzerland. When France entered the war, he used his Légion d'honneur Officer decoration to obtain safe conduct and take his family to England, where he believed he would be safe from the bombings of German planes, which were hitting Paris at that time.

Financial difficulties | (...) the following address: 41. Queen's Garden. Lancaster Gate. London. W., (...) it was a modest pension. In London, financial difficulties continued.

The stay in London | Accompanied by his wife, he visited Westminster Abbey. On another occasion he visited the National Gallery in the company of Graça Aranha, a Brazilian poet and diplomat, whom he had probably met at the Brazilian Academy of Letters. Oswaldo Cruz stayed in London from the end of August 1914 until January 1915, and as far as we know, he did not carry out scientific activities. He returned to Brazil alone and already quite ill, but had to leave his family there, for fear of attacks on ships crossing the Atlantic.

Oswaldo Cruz is a great Brazilian personality. Letters from him almost never appear on the market, and this one has relevant content to get to know this historical character better.